Table Of ContentThe Online Library of Liberty
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Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury,
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,
vol. 1 [1737]
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Online Library of Liberty: Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, vol. 1
Edition Used:
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Douglas den Uyl
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001). 3 vols. Vol. 1.
Author: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury
Foreword: Douglas Den Uyl
About This Title:
This new Liberty Fund edition of Characteristicks presents the complete 1732 text of
this classic work of philosophy and political theory. Also included are faithful
reproductions of the stirring engravings that Shaftesbury created to facilitate the
reader’s consideration of his meditations on the interrelationships among truth,
goodness, beauty, virtue, liberty, responsibility, society, and the state.
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About Liberty Fund:
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study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
Copyright Information:
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Fair Use Statement:
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Table Of Contents
Foreword
A Note On the Text
Preface
A Letter, &c.
An Essay, &c.
Advice, &c.
Anthony, Third Earl of Shaftesbury
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[Back to Table of Contents]
FOREWORD
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, wrote one of the most
important and influential books of the eighteenth century. Other than Locke’s Second
Treatise, Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, first
published in 1711, was the most reprinted book in English in that century. A three-
volume work, the Characteristicks was influential not only in England but throughout
Europe. Three centuries later, Shaftesbury is most remembered—when he is
remembered at all—as the initiator of the “moral sense” school of British ethical
theory usually associated with another eighteenth-century thinker, Francis Hutcheson.
Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and others of that era are connected to
Shaftesbury as part of a way of moral theorizing that emphasized sentiment in moral
experience.
The groundwork for that movement is certainly to be found in the pages of
Shaftesbury, but one would do well not to approach these texts predisposed to a
certain framework or perspective. In doing so, one would miss a richness of style and
substance, an exceptional learning, and a subtlety of thought seldom paralleled in the
English language. Shaftesbury’s essay “An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit” is
the basis of his reputation. But it is a work quite unlike the others in these volumes.
The “Inquiry” is deductive and reads like a formal treatise. Most of the other works
are discursive and literary in character. It would be difficult even to classify some of
the essays, such as the “Miscellaneous Reflections.” Indeed, when one considers the
Characteristicks as a whole, one finds here a collection of writings of great diversity.
No doubt this diversity was intentional on Shaftesbury’s part. He tells us, for example,
that “there is more need . . . to interrupt the long-spun thread of reasoning, and bring
into the mind, by many different glances and broken views, what cannot so easily be
introduced by one steady bent or continued stretch of sight.”
It is, in fact, one of the intriguing features about Shaftesbury that, although his
remarks seem clear enough, efforts to identify his full position on an issue can often
be more complicated than expected. For example, in “A Letter Concerning
Enthusiasm,” we find, apparently, an argument for vented, but moderated, enthusiasm
as part of a recommendation for religious toleration. Enthusiasm—which at the time
was usually connected to religion and had a ring of “fanaticism” to it—was said to be
natural to human beings. Rather than suppress enthusiasm as some would
recommend, Shaftesbury argues for constrained tolerance. However, by the end of the
essay, we read that “something there will be of extravagance and fury, when the ideas
or images received are too big for the narrow human vessel to contain. So that
inspiration may be justly called divine enthusiasm; for the word itself signifies divine
presence, and was made use of by the philosopher whom the earliest Christian Fathers
called divine, to express whatever was sublime in human passions.”
After reading “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” one is left with more questions than
answers. Is there a form of enthusiasm that Shaftesbury finds unqualifiedly good? If
so, is this enthusiasm like the other enthusiasm that worried so many in Shaftesbury’s
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day? If not, what is the difference? Is enthusiasm really a feature of human nature?
This passage suggests that enthusiasm comes from outside the human person. To what
extent is enthusiasm a feature of Christianity? The same passage is ambiguous about
that question, but it suggests an ancient, pre-Christian form of enthusiasm. If there are
non-Christian forms, is the Christian version a purer form of enthusiasm? With
respect to the number and variety of questions it raises, this essay is typical of the
others found in the Characteristicks.
Not only do these writings open a number of questions for exploration, but they raise
them in diverse formats. The “Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” is called a “letter,” but
we have as well (in Shaftesbury’s own words) an “essay,” “advice,” an “inquiry,” a
“rhapsody,” and “miscellaneous reflections” on the preceding treatises. Not only are
different modes of reflective thinking represented, but in the “Miscellaneous
Reflections” Shaftesbury further complicates matters by giving us thoughts about his
own thoughts. All this makes for fascinating reading, to be sure, but it also signals
some fascinating rereading. One can come back to these texts over and over again and
still find fresh insights. And the different nature of these works, not to mention the
subtle contours within them, only adds to the enjoyment of rereading them. No
wonder the Characteristicks was so popular during the eighteenth century.
Why, then, would the Characteristicks eventually fall into such obscurity? One can
only speculate: are the different forms of writing diverse ways of pointing to one
message, are they refracted glimpses from a single perspective, or could they be
disparate and only loosely connected points of view? Whatever the answer, there is a
certain degree of self-conscious subtlety that Shaftesbury has put into this work to
elicit these questions. This subtlety is endemic to the sensibilities of the eighteenth
century, but perhaps not so to subsequent eras. This difference of temperament may in
part explain the Characteristicks’ fall from favor. The work’s messages are perhaps
multiple and not driven home with the same transparency of purpose and objective as
writings of later times. Indeed, Shaftesbury calls upon the reader to reflect with him, a
somewhat more demanding task than asking only that the reader grasp a message.
Furthermore, Shaftesbury expects the reader to make some effort, so the author is not
compelled to please pre-existing tastes or opinions. In this respect, Shaftesbury stands
in contrast to the modern author who “purchases his reader’s favour by all imaginable
compliances and condescensions.” Shaftesbury writes less to inform, instruct, or
persuade than to move the reader to thought.
Yet despite the demands placed upon the reader for intellectual reflection, there is
nevertheless a peculiarly aesthetic quality to Shaftesbury’s array of styles and forms
of writing. Indeed, the aesthetic element looms large in Shaftesbury, and he has been
credited with pioneering some forms of modern thinking about aesthetics and
aesthetic experience. The eighteenth century itself was deeply concerned with the
aesthetic, in large measure, I believe, due to Shaftesbury. One thinks of Burke’s A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757), but Hume, Hutcheson, Smith, and others give aesthetic issues—or at least the
imagination—central importance in their theories.
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For Shaftesbury, the companion to intellectual reflection is aesthetic experience.
These activities are not only mutually reinforcing, but share certain dimensions. One
is struck by the beauty of any object of understanding, and the beautiful is itself a sign
of an order waiting to be grasped by the mind. Aristotle noted that the most abstract
thought is aided by and represented in the imagination, and Shaftesbury is ever
mindful of this insight. The Characteristicks appeals to both intellect and imagination.
But more than this, Shaftesbury may have been one of the first to understand that the
modern world would be moved primarily by imagination, however much he may have
preferred the guidance of reason. Indeed, it is here that the link to sentiment
mentioned earlier is to be found, for sentiment and imagination are themselves
integrally connected.
Believing that the modern world would be moved by imagination and sentiment,
Shaftesbury’s task was to fashion a way to lead the reader to intellectual introspection
and reflection while engaging the imagination. The aesthetic dimension was,
therefore, the link between intellect and imagination, sentiment and judgment. One of
the truly remarkable features of the Characteristicks is its use of visual images—one
for each essay, each volume, and for the work as a whole. These images were
carefully and meticulously designed by Shaftesbury himself to represent, in visual
terms, some of the main themes of his writings. In the early editions containing these
images, the page numbers for the corresponding passages are often included on the
image itself.
The round frontispiece that serves as the image for the entire Characteristicks refers
to two passages in the “Miscellaneous Reflections.” Both are given originally in
Greek, and, interestingly, both originally appear in a footnote rather than the body of
the text itself. The first passage, from Marcus Aurelius, is:
What view you take is everything, and your view is in your power. Remove it then
when you choose, and then, as if you had rounded the cape, come calm serenity, a
waveless bay.
In the frontispiece are ships in a harbor, which is the representation of the “waveless
bay.” The ships have presumably “rounded the cape” as well. The second citation is
from Epictetus and reads:
As is the water-dish, so is the soul; as is the ray which falls on the water, so are the
appearances. When then the water is moved the ray too seems to be moved, yet is not.
And when, accordingly, a man is giddy, it is not the arts and the virtues which are
thrown into confusion, but the spirit to which they belong; and when he is recovered
so are they.
One sees in the frontispiece a water-dish with a ray striking it. The Greek on the
image itself can be rendered as “what light can be given,” pointing further to the
passage from Epictetus. The image then, with the interpretative help given to us by
Shaftesbury, can not only offer us some insight into the text, but also serve as a way
of reminding us of the text in significant themes. And, in a manner reminiscent of the
emblem books of the preceding century, in which didactic messages are reinforced
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with visual imagery, these images encourage the sort of reflection that Shaftesbury
more fully elicits from the reader.
For almost the first time in an English edition since the eighteenth century, this
Liberty Fund edition produces Shaftesbury’s images as part of his text as they were
originally situated. Certainly these images were regarded by Shaftesbury to be as
much a part of the Characteristicks as the words themselves. That the words could
have appeared without the images for so long offers a possible reason for scholarly
inattention to the Characteristicks for the last three centuries. What Shaftesbury
sought to have function together—namely, words and images—came to be separated
and specialized in later eras. Today, the so-called “mixing of media” represents
something of a return to Shaftesbury’s insight into the presentation of ideas.
The images are meant to help the reader sort through a rather complicated text, but
they are themselves complicated. For example, in the frontispiece image, one finds a
snake with its tail in its mouth, the shield of Athena, a lion biting a column, a bridle
and bit, a scroll and book, a sphinx, and more. In this as in the other images, all
symbols are placed deliberately and, presumably, have significance for accomplishing
the ends Shaftesbury has in mind. Exploration of the images leads to exploration of
the text and vice versa. But what exactly the symbols in these images signify may not
always be clear to the contemporary reader. Some imagery may be particular to
Shaftesbury himself or to his time. There is, at present, little scholarship on this issue,
with a notable and helpful exception in Felix Paknadel’s “Shaftesbury’s Illustrations
of Characteristics,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtnauld Institutes, vol. 37, 1974.
Shaftesbury’s images are more complicated and abstract than most of the emblem
images in earlier emblem books, but this fact only adds to our puzzlement over
particulars in Shaftesbury’s case. Clearly, however, the aesthetic dimension was of
central significance to Shaftesbury. This Liberty Fund edition is essentially the 1732
edition, including the “Letter Concerning Design” and “The Judgment of Hercules.”
Together these essays help us to appreciate Shaftesbury’s desire to link imagery with
broader philosophical themes.
In the end, however, both with respect to the images and the writings themselves, it is
the reader’s path to self-awareness that Shaftesbury seeks to illuminate. His invitation
to exploration is an invitation to self-exploration. Significantly, the invitation is not
meant to pull one towards a truth outside of oneself. On the contrary, as one rounds
each corner of the labyrinth that is the Characteristicks, one takes another step on the
path of self-exploration. As the author of this challenging work declares, “’Tis not
enough to show us merely faces which may be called men’s; every face must be a
certain man’s.”
Douglas J. Den Uyl
2000
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[Back to Table of Contents]
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
This edition of Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks is based upon the 1732 edition. The
Characteristicks was first published in 1711, but was revised in 1713 by Shaftesbury
before his death. The 1714 edition is therefore the edition most often considered as
the reference point for other editions. It includes Shaftesbury’s emblematic images
and “A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules.”
Despite its inclusion in the 1714 edition, it seems not to be the case that the
“Judgment of Hercules” was meant for the Characteristicks. The emblematic images,
however, certainly were, for they were carefully designed in detail by Shaftesbury
himself. The “Judgment of Hercules” along with the “Letter Concerning Design”
were meant for a separate publication, but the latter gets included for the first time in
the 1732 edition and remains through the 1790 edition. The reason we have chosen to
include these two pieces in this Liberty Fund edition has to do with our presentation
of the emblematic images. The images were designed to be part of the text of the
Characteristicks, but have been virtually invisible since the eighteenth century. To
include them now would seem to raise some interest in Shaftesbury’s aesthetic views
and thus in any direct statements he may have made about that matter. These two
pieces offer some insight to the modern reader who is now rather distant from
Shaftesbury himself. Moreover, these works (along with the images) were very much
a part of the eighteenth century’s familiarity with this work.
A guiding principle of this edition has been to invite the modern reader into it.
Shaftesbury’s main audience may have been those who were educated but who may
not have been specialists or scholars. We therefore sought to produce an attractive
“readable” edition. Apart from modernizing the letters, we have taken some other
steps to make the text accessible to modern readers. The text of the Characteristicks
contains many Latin and Greek quotations. Today, even scholarly audiences, unless
specially trained, are not able to read through these easily. In the Robertson
edition—the most familiar English-language edition of the twentieth century—most
of these passages have been translated in footnotes. We have done the opposite. We
have moved the Robertson translations to the body of the text and the original
language quotations to the footnotes. Because Robertson was the most extant edition
of the twentieth century, we have kept his translations. However, Dr. Evanthia
Speliotis reviewed the translations of the Greek, and Daniel Mahoney and Kathleen
Alvis reviewed the translations of the Latin to see if there were any egregious errors.
They also did the translations for those passages that Robertson somehow failed to
translate. Unless we found a serious error or other fatal flaw, we retained the
Robertson translation even if a “better” or more literal rendering could be imagined.
This edition of the Characteristicks is in three volumes, as the original was. Included
is Shaftesbury’s original index. This index has sometimes been abandoned in later
editions on the grounds that it was an inadequate and outmoded search device. It was,
however, an index Shaftesbury did himself. It is often rather unusual in its entries (see
for example what he has listed under “philosophy”), and for that reason may be useful
as a tool of interpretation. Rather than transfer Shaftesbury’s page numbers listed in
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the index into our own, we have inserted them in brackets in the margins, with the
precise point where the page begins indicated by an inverted caret in the text.
Shaftesbury’s footnote cross-references also refer to these pages. Including the
original page numbers has an additional advantage when it comes to the images. With
each image that began an essay, Shaftesbury offered the page numbers where
passages could be found that help to explain the meaning of the image. Retaining the
original page numbers allows this referencing to be more easily accomplished.
Finally, we have sought to keep the text as free as possible from scholarly apparatus
and commentary. There are recent scholarly editions of the Characteristicks in
English, most notably the one by Lawrence Klein for Cambridge University Press and
the one by Philip Ayres for Oxford University Press. These editions are well worth
consultation. The Liberty Fund publishing mission, however, is one that generally
seeks to minimize such insertions whenever possible. In the end, our
hope—somewhat like Shaftesbury’s own—is to have an edition that engages any
educated reader as well as the scholar.
volume i
A Letter concerning Enthusiasm.
Sensus Communis; an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour.
Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author.
volume ii
An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit.
The Moralists; a Philosophical Rhapsody.
volume iii
Miscellaneous Reflections on the said Treatises, and other critical Subjects.
A Notion of the Historical Draught, or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules. With a
Letter concerning Design.
Characteristicks
volume i
A Letter concerning Enthusiasm.
Sensus Communis; an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour.
Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author.
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